Though this list could run many pages (even just focusing on films of the seventies), I’m sharing a few films that, whether I intended it or not, certainly informed my approach to The Last Tourist with their deft and entertaining critiques of the intersection of politics and business. The Parallax View (1974) For a…
We all know that moment, when you get to the last act of an insanely readable thriller and then the rug is pulled out from under you! The plot twist revealed. It is that moment that turns the story completely on its head and makes you question everything. The moment in a novel that makes…
You may remember me. Think back. The summer of 1990. I know that’s a while ago, but the wire services picked up the story and I was in every newspaper in the country… I stayed in the news for two or three days, but even when the cameras and the reporters moved on to…
It’s not an exaggeration to say that my heart broke a bit with the news that Mary Higgins Clark, America’s “Queen of Suspense,” died last Friday at the age of 92. Any time a person passes who has been part of your life for as long as she was mine, the loss is profound. And…
When I first began writing about Milo Weaver in 2007, I was attempting to change course creatively. My earlier writing—five novels set in Eastern Europe during the Cold War—had begun to feel like a kind of escape from the messy, post-9/11 world unfolding around me. Instead of dealing with the world I was living in,…
Connecticut conjures images of grand estates, private schools, manicured hedges, cozy shoreline towns with white steeples, yacht clubs, and Wednesday night regattas. Martha Stewart has lived here, Jacqueline Bouvier went to school here, and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward raised their children here. Connecticut is also the location of some vicious and bizarre murders—including the…
The name “Brach” conjures up thoughts of candy corn, caramels, chocolate nougats, and various other delicious bagged confections. However, in the annals of crime, the name conjures up Helen Brach, the wealthiest woman in the United States ever to disappear and presumed to be murdered. Started in 1904, the E. J. Brach & Sons candy…
Grief. Despair. Depression. Hope. One unspeakable tragedy has the ability to affect countless individuals in varying ways. And while everyone effected reacts in their own way, it’s ultimately how one responds and recovers from the trials and tribulations of tragedy that shapes themselves and their future. Do you give up and run away? Sink so…
The book I’ve written (my debut novel) is called The Last Day. It is set in our world, forty years into the future—a world in which, thanks to a catastrophe in the heavens, the planet’s rotation has ground to a halt. Half the planet faces inwards, towards the sun; half faces out, towards the bleak,…
If you are wondering why crime is such a big genre that doesn’t appeal to you because you prefer fantasy, romance, period drama or because you tried a Poirot once and didn’t get it (this was me, too), these might change your mind. They’re not just crime books—they’re good books. Best Book for Romance Readers…
